Jeffrey Sachs Quotations

We're going to have to forgive a great deal of the Soviet era debt. There's no question about that. Let's face up to that. We're going to have to put in money if Russia is really going to consolidate a democracy.

We're fighting all the wrong wars in this country.

We've waited 20 years, until we have 36 million infected in the world, before we've started to do something, ... It's shocking how we've let this go on. And costs of intervening today are vastly greater than they would have been in the past and they'll be greater if we continue to dither on this.

There is no doubt that Malawi needs 100 percent debt cancellation as soon as possible, and I will do everything possible to speed that up.

Let's start fresh with Russia on some real help and some real reform.

Senior development specialists in the Treasury can be counted on one hand. America's government is not even aware of the gap between its commitments and action, because almost nobody in authority understands the actions that would be needed to meet the commitments.

My sense is that the IMF does not have a proper modus operandi for the current conditions in the world. They misjudge rhetorically. They misjudge tactically. They misunderstand the dangers of financial panic, and the results are terrible.

If we did go into a recession, something that's always possible for the U.S. or Europe, we could lower interest rates and expand the money supply without worrying about the price of gold.

If we continue this combination of high rhetoric and grossly insufficient action, I think the risks to (the United States ') own national security ... and the risk to global stability are very real.

we took on as a project helping a village in western Kenya. It was 5,000 hungry people beset with malaria and AIDS. And we said, 'let's apply the recommendations of the Millennium Project in this village with the support of a private donor, because government donors don't seem to do such practical things.' And we helped them get improved seeds and some fertilizer for the planting season. That's all. Very low cost. They produced four times more food this year than last year.

I think it is an 'in-your-face' move and who knows what's going to happen,

I would hope that Malawi would pull together. Rather than having such an intense internal political battle there could be unity in the country politically so that these critical needs can be addressed effectively.

Most companies that are interested in working in the poorest places don't know how to do it right now, ... don't know how we fit in the broader scheme. This provides a framework where all of this makes sense. The private initiative can get this process going. I am counting not only on financing, but technology and ideas. There's going to be a tremendous amount of learning about best approaches.

While the Bush administration is prepared to spend $100 billion to rid Iraq of WMD, it has been unwilling to spend more than 0.2% of that sum... this year on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

We give away tens of billions to Brazil, or to one place or another, without thinking. But in those days, to give even a tiny amount to Russia was viewed almost as anathema by many parts of our own society and our political leadership, whether it was the Bush administration or the Clinton administration.

Trade is important, but I visit places that are so cut off from world markets that they aren't really part of the local economy, let alone the world economy.

We, being the Western world, wouldn't let Russia off the hook on debt. So there were demands on debt servicing in the early days until they ran out of reserves. There was no real aid program, just a fictional aid program.

The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves.

When is the last time anybody heard Vice President Dick Cheney even feign a word of concern for the world's poor?

When countries open up to trade, they generally benefit, because they can sell more, then they can buy more. And trade has two-way gain.

Countries like Malawi need, require and deserve the increased help of the international community, not only in the form of food aid but in the form of help to grow more food.

The Russian government not only acted corruptly, not only built up a new oligarchy of billionaires out of nothing, basically, but also gave away its most valuable financial assets-its ownership of the huge natural resource sector in Russia.

Russia increasingly lived on short-term borrowing. Now, this was an extraordinary merry-go-round.

Development can really work everywhere. But most of sub-Saharan Africa, the Andean region, and Central Asia face obstacles.

The broader issue of the real role of the U.S., the foreign assistance aspect of that, who's going to pay for the security of a global economy?

As of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a kind of professional consensus arose in Washington. It was called a consensus for the world, but how many people really believed all of it is an open question. A consensus came, at least within Washington, about how countries should change from non-market economies to market economies.

A lot of the old apparatchiks came back in, and corruption really dramatically increased in '94/'95, particularly around Yeltsin's re-election in 1996, when the government used corrupt practices to give money to business, part of which was returned to the campaign coffers, and helped pay for Yeltsin's re-election.

There's a lot of strength in the U.S., but there's a lot of froth also. The froth will blow off. We're going to have to face up to some realities that we're not fully facing up to right now.

For many parts of the world, the chasm that has to be crossed to get from where they were, whether it's a dictatorship, economic collapse, financial crisis or all of the above, to the other side, that is a working market economy and a functioning democracy, is extraordinarily difficult and requires help.

It's time for other candidates to come forward that have experience in development.

I want the donors to think ahead, not just handle the immediate crisis,

The war on terror cannot ever be won if the war on poverty isn't won,

The volatility of international capital is obviously destabilizing markets today.

The U.S. has a sound economy. It also has a cyclical economy. It also has stock market values right now that are hard to explain on historical norms. While it's always possible that everything can be based on the new economy, it's also quite possible that we're doing a little bit of exaggeration in just how wonderful things are.

I'm focusing on a world divided between rich and poor, and a world that doesn't seem to be able to manage the natural base of our lives: air, oceans, or biodiversity. It's a mistake to think that globalization is automatically beneficent and should run its due course-but also to think that it ought to be shut down.

In 2001, the prices of medications have continued to fall rapidly, ... Even though antiretroviral drug prices have declined to around $500 per year, this is still far above what poor countries can afford without donor assistance.

In 1991, a miraculous thing happened, and that's the Soviet Union ended. So there was an opportunity to build a very healthy and new world, on the basis of the change that the Russian people themselves wanted. But for Russia to make that change was going to be one of the most remarkably difficult and complex passages imaginable.

If the whole world went into recession, all the major central banks could cut interest rates and expand the money supply.

If you have billions and billions of dollars coming due in a country in a short period of time, and if a sense of panic develops among your creditors, so that everybody demands the money out all at once, it's almost inevitable that the debtor economy will collapse, because it won't be able to come up with that amount of money in a short period.

The world got side-tracked from development issues during the post-9/11 crisis period.

It's not an accident that the U.S. ranks lowest of all major donor countries in the world - that is the share of our income that goes to development aid. Americans will ask whether, because were so generous privately, that makes up the difference. But it doesn't. We still rank far below other countries.

I believe myself that there's a great deal more interest and engagement among Americans than our politicians recognize.

It's the American leadership that has not played the role it should be playing and that leaders in other countries have been playing.

We were proposing, in a sense, that the rest of the world be made safe for American ideas, as they adopted intellectual property rights that gave patent protection to our very innovative economy.

There is no economic imperative that will condemn us to deplete our vital resource base, but neither is there an invisible hand that will prevent us from doing so.

The longer you wait, the less fun. If you wait until the bitter end, the whole economy can be destroyed.

The idea that UN commitments should be followed by action is indeed a radical one, especially for the United States, where wilful neglect of its own commitments is the rule.

Soil mapping is one of the pillars to the challenge of sustainable development

Globalization was a deep trend pushed by technology and right ideas, as much as anything else.

The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet.

The Russian drama began at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union mercifully ended. Russia and 14 other new countries emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Every one of those 15 new states faced a profound historical, economic, financial, social and political challenge.

There's a lot of strength in the U.S., but there's a lot of froth also. The froth will blow off. We're going to have to face up to some realities that we're not fully facing up to right now.

This is our greatest challenge: learning to live in a crowded and interconnected world that is creating unprecedented pressures on human society and on the physical environment.

We are not at war (except with our own demons).

Everybody needs to understand that policies are going to change to make it unprofitable if you wreck the planet, those companies that continue exploring and developing fossil fuel resources for which there is no safe use are going to pay a very heavy cost for that.

The aspiration of society is the flourishing of its members, this report gives evidence on how to achieve societal well?being. It's not by money alone, but also by fairness, honesty, trust and good health.

We had a booming stock market in 1929 and then went into the world's greatest depression. We have a booming stock market in 1999. Will the bubble somehow burst, and then we enter depression? Well, some things are not different.

The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves. Africa should say: 'thank you very much but we need this money to meet the needs of children who are dying right now so we will put the debt servicing payments into urgent social investment in health, education, drinking water, control of AIDS and other needs.'

America's government is not even aware of the gap between its commitments and action, because almost nobody in authority understands the actions that would be needed to meet the commitments.

Despite a decade of criticism and budget cuts, the specialised UN agencies have far more expertise and hands-on experience than any other organisations in the world.

If we did go into a recession, something that's always possible for the U.S. or Europe, we could lower interest rates and expand the money supply without worrying about the price of gold.

The rich do not have to invest enough in the poorest countries to make them rich; they need to invest enough so that these countries can get their foot on the economic ladder . . . Economic development works. It can be successful. It tends to build on itself. But it must get started.

All of the incessant debate about development assistance, and whether the rich are doing enough to help the poor, actually concerns less than 1% of rich world income. The effort required of the rich is indeed so slight that to do less is to announce brazenly to a large part of the world: 'You count for nothing.' We should not be surprised, then, if in later years the rich reap the whirlwind of that heartless response.

It's quite possible to arrive in the year 2030 where people are no longer dying of poverty. We could actually help lead a global end-not a reduction, but an end-to absolute poverty...I have always found that a committed, powerful group of leaders, can make a huge difference.

In Asia, a lot of successful economies that had been living on their own saving, decided to open up their financial markets to international capital in the early 1990s. So here were countries doing quite well, but they decided to borrow a bit more and do even better.

We've taken the view that if the rest of the world would democratize and create market economies, that would spread the benefits of prosperity around the world, and that it would enhance our own prosperity, and our own stability and security, as well.

Unfortunately, the real focus in this country has not been on the rest of the world. It's been on our own issues and our own problems. Fair enough. But it means that our simple hopes that everything will just work out abroad aren't really coming to pass.

Devaluations are never easy.

Russia has gone through eight years of continuing economic pain.

The runs started in Thailand after the IMF intervened in such a dramatic way. Then the IMF came to Indonesia.

My colleagues and I took a stand in our work several years ago that we would not look for the magic bullet, because there is none. These are just basic problems requiring basic work. Nothing magic about it.

Tax the rich. End the wars. Break the power of lobbies in Washington. These are the demands of Occupy Wall Street. They are very important. The US corporations dominate Washington. The big oil companies, Wall Street banks and the military-industrial complex - they rule this country and their influence and power has to be broken.

The essence of Africa's crisis is fundamentally its extreme poverty and therefore its inability to mobilize out of its own resources even the barest of minimum resources to address any of the public health crises that Africa faces.

I think the IMF helped to detonate the Indonesian crisis.

Our interconnectedness on the planet is the dominating truth of the 21st century. One stark result is that the world's poor live, and especially die, with the awareness that the United States is doing little to mobilise the weapons of mass salvation that could offer them survival, dignity and eventually the escape from poverty.

White House and State Department foreign-policy experts are overwhelmingly directed towards military and diplomatic issues, not development issues.

If you have a lot of short-term debt, it means that all of that money can be demanded in a very short period of time. Technically, short-term debt means money that's coming due within a year. Typically, it means money that's coming due within 30 to 90 days.

Business often does a good job supporting communities: the arts, universities, and scientific enterprises... But that philosophy has rarely reached poor countries. Even businesses that are enlightened in their home bases see Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia as places to exploit natural resources or use cheap labor.

The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity.

It's not so unusual to run out of someone else's currency.

Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. Its an uncomfortable truth.

In the early 1990s, when a lot of the developing world opened up to international capital flows... they ended up in very good long-term projects, but projects that weren't going to pay off for five or 10 or 20 years.

The truth of good economic doctoring is to know the general principles, and to really know the specifics. To understand the context, and also, to understand that an economy may need some tender loving care, not just the so-called hard truths, if it's going to get by.

The essence of Africa's crises is fundamentally it's extreme poverty.

Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism.

In my view, there is an urgent need to communicate with the public and help to explain where there is consensus, and where are there doubts about the issues of sustainable development.

At the most basic level, the key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development.

Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery.

Every morning our newspapers could read, 'More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.' How? The poor die in hospital wards that lack drugs, in villages that lack antimalarial bed nets, in houses that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public comment. Sadly, sad stories rarely get written.

The idea that the UN system could provide real leadership on the great development challenges will strain credulity in some quarters.

History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything.

Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge, is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. Our planet is crowded to an unprecendented degree. It is bursting at the seams. It's bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms

My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops, but that there are too few.

Obama is already setting a new historic course by reorienting the economy from private consumption to public investments...free-market pundits bemoan the evident intention of Obama and team to 'tell us what kind of car to drive'. Yet that is exactly what they intend to do...and rightly so. Free-market ideology is an anachronism in an era of climate change.

The basic idea was that if a country would put its economy as an integrated piece of the world system, that it would benefit from that with economic growth. I concur with that basic view.

We need to defend the interests of those whom we've never met and never will.

The key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development. The ladder of development hovers overhead, and the poorest of the poor are stuck beneath it. They lack the minimum amount of capital necessary to get a foothold, and therefore need a boost up to the first rung.

Roosevelt talked not only about Freedom from Fear, but also Freedom from Want.

Let the future say of our generation that we sent forth mighty currents of hope and that we worked together to heal the world.

You can't fight the greatest pandemic for years without resources,